


come to me in the clearing and there we shall dance

by QueenOfCarrotFlowers



Series: Carrot's Dark Stories [15]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Bestiality, Blood, Demon Kylo Ren, Eldritch, F/M, Implied Cannibalism, Kinda, Murder, No Sexual Violence, Reylo HEA, Shapeshifting, Threats of Violence, criticism of religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-03 18:13:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21183803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfCarrotFlowers/pseuds/QueenOfCarrotFlowers
Summary: You are here, the voice whispers from the space behind her eyes.It is late. Why are you here?She had been hoping he would find her - her only friend. Kylo. She supposes he’s a demon, or a devil, or one of the heathen gods, but she's never worked up the nerve to ask him and he has not volunteered that information.Kylo’s voice is honey in a hole, deep and sweet and full of concern for her, and she sobs with relief at the sound of it, although she is too breathless to answer. Instead she continues running, slipping on wet leaves and doing her best to avoid tripping on roots.I am with you, he murmurs in her head.Come to me. Come to the clearing. I will meet you there.Written to a prompt from Lilander:The Crucible/The VVitch AU: 1692. When a Reverend is brutally murdered, the god-fearing folk of a Puritan village accuse an orphan scavenger of witchcraft and fornicating with the devil in the dark woods. They’re not wrong.





	come to me in the clearing and there we shall dance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lilander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilander/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Hand That Feeds](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16378784) by [persimonne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/persimonne/pseuds/persimonne). 

> This is for Lilander, who made some wonderful art for my Reylo Fanfiction Anthology piece _[real life sucks losers dry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20520071)_ (an Eldritch horror Heathers AU), so as a little thank you I've written this to her prompt.
> 
> I had a lot of fun with this and I hope I've done the prompt justice! Thanks so much Lilander, for the artwork and for this fun prompt. Thanks also to flypaper_brain for being a fantastic beta as usual, and to persimonne from whom I borrowed some aspects of her Kylo in [The Hand That Feeds](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16378784).
> 
> For people squeamish about the "Bestality" tag: The Beast in question is demon!Kylo in the shape of a goat, it's not _really_ a goat (although it looks and acts like a goat, and Rey fucks the goat form).

Rey scrambles around the corner of the chicken coop and nearly trips over the root of the huge birch tree that marks the boundary between the parsonage’s small garden and the vast expanse of the forest. Once she’s past the treeline the leaves prove to be cold and slippery against the bottoms of her feet, and she’s holding herself together just enough to keep from falling down and giving up completely. With winter approaching the sun goes down early, and by now it’s been under the horizon for long enough to settle the entire forest in a deep chill. The moon is full tonight but clouds scutter across the sky, obscuring its glow, and the fear coursing through her veins confuses her senses. The sound of her breathing and the blood pumping behind her ears is all she can hear, and nothing looks familiar. 

_You are here_, the voice whispers from the space behind her eyes. _It is late. Why are you here?_

She had been hoping he would find her - her only friend. Kylo. She supposes he’s a demon, or a devil, or one of the heathen gods, but she's never worked up the nerve to ask him and he has not volunteered that information. 

Kylo’s voice is honey in a hole, deep and sweet and full of concern for her, and she sobs with relief at the sound of it, although she is too breathless to answer. Instead she continues running, slipping on wet leaves and doing her best to avoid tripping on roots.

_I am with you_, he murmurs in her head. _Come to me. Come to the clearing. I will meet you there_.

He _is_ with her, she can feel him now. She has grown used to feeling him when she is in the shelter of the trees, hearing his voice speak to her from that space behind her eyes. He explained to her once that he occupies the empty space in the elements - air, earth, fire, water - but only in his clearing can he take on a form of his own. If she can make it to the clearing tonight, she knows that he will be able to protect her. 

She pelts through the forest. He is in the leaves under her feet, the freezing water droplets left over from the earlier rain that spatter her face as she pushes past a low branch. He is in the trees themselves, and she follows the path his presence sets for her, through the otherwise dark and uncaring forest. Even in the daylight it is impossible for her to find the clearing without his guidance; it seems to move, to never be in quite the same place from one day to the next. At night, desperate to sleep, she imagines him in his clearing. She wonders sometimes if she might not be insane, her friend and his clearing existing only in her mind. But then the next day she finds it again and she is convinced of everything, all over again.

Kylo is with her, but she is being chased and it is still very cold. When she escaped the house she had already prepared for bed, so she is clad only in a thin nightgown, hair loose around her shoulders and down her back, feet bare. Rey is cold and frightened and feels much younger than her twenty years. Her lungs and the muscles in her legs burn, and she struggles to keep moving, stay upright, keep moving. She stumbles against a fallen log and stubs her toe - he is in the log, but he can’t keep it from hurting her. He murmurs an apology and she bites her lip to keep from crying out. She knows that her life depends on getting far away and remaining quiet. Armitage must have found his father’s body by now, and she is certain that even considering how he felt about the Reverend, and despite any affection he ever held for her, he will send the villagers after her without a second thought. She was never quite able to be the sister he so clearly, desperately wanted her to be. Tears sting her eyes; the past, now, all in the past. Within moments she’s up again, limping slightly but continuing forward, into the woods, towards… towards _him_.

_Come to me_, he whispers into the space behind her eyes_,_ his presence continuing to flit from tree to tree,_ come into the woods, come to me_.

Kylo’s voice, familiar, keeps her centered. Her late mother’s rosary beads, gripped in her right fist, give her strength.

_Rey, run faster, run faster, come to me_.

She runs faster, as the voice insists, despite the cold and the dark and the fear coursing through her veins. 

The beads threaten to slip through her fingers and she grips them harder. They are wet - dripping and dark, slick with the Reverend’s lifeblood. She’d sliced him with the kitchen knife, right across the throat, as he sat in his chair at the head of the kitchen table. He’d told her that Armitage had seen her in the forest, naked and cavorting with an unseen demon, and that he feared for her soul again.

“You shall not go into the forest again,” he’d said authoritatively, looming over her as she sat, head down, hands folded demurely on her lap. His fingers had played against the ring of keys that hung at his belt. “I should have known better than to bring a godless Papist into my home. No better than a heathen, you are.” He’d sounded so disappointed, she could almost believe that he was.

She responded anyway. “Sir, please, I denounced the Pope, I converted…” but her explanation died on her lips when he dangled her rosary beads in front of her face. She’d had them her whole life, as long as she could remember, and they were precious to her. Not because of anything having to do with her soul; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d recited a Hail Mary with those beads. They had been the only thing of her mother’s that Rey was permitted to keep when she’d gone to the orphanage after her death, and she had kept them with her ever since. She had tucked them under a loose floorboard in her bedroom instead of throwing them away when she’d been forced to convert at the age of fourteen under the hard hand of Reverend Hux when he’d indentured her from Ireland after the death of his wife. They were all she had that were her own; they reminded her that she had once belonged.

“My child, the rod hangs next to the fireplace. Get it, and bring it here to me.” Her heart had stuttered in her chest; she had heard the Reverend use the rod on his son, on poor Armitage, but he had never raised it to her, never had a reason to. Slowly she pushed her chair back and made to stand. He took a step back and continued. “You are bound for Hell if you do not truly repent. You must submit, my dear. I shall beat this out of you and lock you under the stairs until you confess your sins. Do you wish to confess your sins to me now? What were you doing in the forest? Tell me now and much ugliness could be avoided.”

Rey had nothing to confess. “No.”

The Reverend had sighed at that, but she recognized glee when she sensed it. It was for her own good, he insisted. For the sake of her soul, which was more important to him than her happiness. The Reverend always claimed that souls were more important to him than happiness; his own, and everyone else’s, but Rey knew this was a lie. He took pleasure in suffering, and that was it. That was the attitude that had broken the Reverend’s wife, and his only son. No way in Hell was that going to break Rey, too. So after his speech she’d assented - timidly, modestly - and then she’d stood, with her head bowed, and shuffled towards the room where the rod hung waiting next to the fireplace. The Reverend sat down and opened his Bible, in a mockery of prayer, the rosary beads in a small pile on the table beside his elbow. As she moved past him the knives on the counter had caught her eye; there was a way out of this after all. How had it not occurred to her before?

Rey had been shocked by how far the Reverend’s blood splashed when she drew that knife across his throat. The warm liquid doused her hands, and the Bible, and the beads. The splatter had reached at least half-way down the table, fine mist landing in the spot where her plate usually sat. It had _excited_ her, seeing the Reverend’s blood on the open book, his surprised grunt just before she murdered him. She had been terrified, yes, but it felt good to take the life of Brendol Hux. He was a vile man who terrorized the village in the name of his God, sparing no one, not even his family or his innocent indentured servant. 

The rosary beads were the only things she’d taken with her when she ran. 

Back in the forest, Rey breaks through the treeline. She’s positive she’s never been this far from the village but nevertheless, here she is. Kylo's clearing; his home. The sweet familiarity of the place overwhelms her and she leans against the nearest tree to take it all in. She can see it clearly as the clouds run clear of the moon - a small area really, not even an acre, filled with scrub and mud. At the center are the ruins of a cottage surrounded by a stocky stone fence. The cottage has been long abandoned and its surviving window stares at her like a socket, empty of its eye. She can’t feel her feet and her lungs and muscles scream for rest. She collapses into the cold mud, which oozes between her fingers and threatens to swallow her precious wooden rosary beads. Her tears fall to the ground and she maintains just enough control to keep from screaming, although she can’t control her sobs. The ground is cold but soft, and it feels good to lay down on her side. The chilly wet soaks through the thin cotton of her nightgown and swallows the side of her head. She could sleep here; she could rest, if only her heart and breathing would slow. She could rest forever, just as long as she doesn’t ever have to go back to the parsonage.

Where is he?

_I’m here, Rey_. Kylo’s voice is thick and warm behind her eyes, and she cracks them open to see him jog from behind the fence. He is beautiful in this form, she thinks. Even under the long, jet-black hair that covers him from horn to hoof she can tell that his four legs are muscular, his body thick. His middle sways as he trots over to her, and as he moves closer she notices his ears, which peek straight out from just beneath the impressive horns that curve back out of the top of his head. His eyes glow orange in the dark.

Her heart leaps into her throat and she wants to leap up, too, get to her feet and run to him, but she is so exhausted she can’t even sit all the way up. Her weariness frustrates her and she finally gives in and yells - but her yell is weak, nothing more than a hiccup and barely audible even in the small clearing. 

He reaches her and his body is warm against her. She clings to him and weeps, her tears of hysteria now mixed with tears of relief.

The creature pushes his muzzle into her neck and grunts as the honey voice whispers again behind her eyes.

_My sweet, my sweet, my sweet_.

His warm body, soft and reeking of musk, presses close against her. The voice comes again, concerned.

_You smell like blood. Are you hurt? _

“I killed Reverend Hux,” she sobs, “Armitage saw me in the forest again and told him, and he was going to beat me and keep me in the house. I can’t be away from you, so I slit his throat.” Her voice catches in her throat as she relives the wonder and the horror of the event. “They’ll be coming for me, Armitage will make sure of it. They’ll find me, and burn me as a witch.”

_Nobody is going to burn you, my sweet_. The honey voice sings in her head and the stinking black creature bleats softly, as though in agreement. _I will take care of you_.

“Please,” she begs, as the enormity of what is happening settles over her and crushes her with its weight. “Please, please, I am so afraid. I have nothing, without the Reverend, no home, no…”

_You have me_, the voice croons, _and I will never leave you. I need you, Rey_.

The hysteria that had been building anew in Rey is beginning to diminish but there is something that could help; after months spent with this creature, in the forest, in his many forms, she knows that he can help her calm down.

“I need you, too,” she replies, her voice heavy. She rolls onto her front and pushes herself up onto her hands and knees. The nightgown sticks to her and the rosary would be lost in the mud if she didn’t keep it clutched in her hand. With her other hand she reaches back and pulls the fabric up and onto her back, exposing herself to the chilly air, and to him.

He presses his muzzle into her neck again, grunting. His hot tongue darts out and licks the side of her face. 

_Yes._

He mounts her from behind, climbing on her like the beast he is. His belly is hot against her lower back and his hooves are sharp on her hips. He is heavy; the cold mud grasps at her, pulling her further down into it as he positions himself. She can feel the tip of the creature’s cock as it comes to rest against her entrance.

_Are you ready? _The voice asks, but before the thought is fully formed she pushes her hips back, taking the head of the cock into her body. Her cunt is surprisingly wet. The animal grunts and the voice in her head moans and he thrusts forward, sheathing his cock completely. It fills her, and for the first time that evening Rey finally feels calm.

Her head falls, forehead resting on her hands folded in front of her. The creature fucks her slowly, like a lover, every stroke rubbing against the parts inside of her that will bring her the most delight. Rey has seen goats rut, she knows how it usually goes - feral, frantic, fast - and that is how she knows for certain that the creature she is with is no goat, that she is not insane. She may be a witch, cavorting with a demon, but at least her mind is her own. 

He has held her and fucked her in many forms during the year of their acquaintance - animals, plants, rocks, the river itself - and by now he knows how best to pleasure her with each of his forms. As she breathes into the mud and he moves above her - in and out, slowly, too slowly but oh so well - the voice murmurs in the space behind her eyes.

_My beautiful sweet, your cunt is perfect and delicious. I love to be inside you; inside your mind, inside your body. I can feel your pleasure._

She can feel it, too. The part of her mind not focused on her building orgasm is listening for voices, the villagers must be looking for her, they _must_, and she is afraid of what will happen when they find her. 

_Do not fear, my sweet. I will not let them hurt you_.

She believes him, even though she doesn’t understand why.

Eventually she forgets to worry. Her knees have wandered further apart, as far as they can comfortably be, and she rocks back against his hot, hairy back legs and cries into the chilled air. Her breath is hot and sends clouds of white into the dimness, and she takes a certain pleasure in watching the mist dissipate as the muscles in her abdomen contract and her body prepares for release. 

There is a shout in the forest and she glimpses a flicker of firelight in between the trees, and the spell is broken. The voice in her head swears and he is out of her and her body mourns the loss of his heat. But the fucking has served its purpose; although a bit frustrated by the interruption Rey is calmer now, and although she is feeling physically tired her mind is sharp. She sits back on her haunches, noticing for the first time the mud that now cakes her entire body. It is thick and warm from their body heat, and it smells oddly clean, a scent that reminds her of newly-sprouted seeds.

_Follow me_, the voice says, trotting back around the squat stone fence towards the collapsed cottage, and she does as he requests. She’s been to the clearing countless times, but only ever outside. She’s never been inside the cottage before. It’s unexciting, dirty and damp, the thatch from the collapsed roof scattered around the floor, but it leaves the room open to the sky and Rey is pleased to see the bright moon looking down at her. She looks right back up at it.

She is not nearly as afraid as she thinks she should be, and she wonders why.

_Stay here, my sweet_, the voice whispers, _I will come back for you. Please do not look outside. Wait for me_.

She promises to wait, and the creature scampers back out through the door to greet the villagers.

She doesn’t look. She sits on a nest of sour-smelling thatch and leans against the stone wall and watches the sky as she listens to the commotion outside. The villagers arrive with shouts and cries. She doesn’t recognize any single voice except for Armitage, calling out above the din, “The witch killed my father! She cavorts with demons in the forest, I have seen her with my own eyes! Kill the witch!” She feels sorry for him, more than anything. He’d hated the Reverend as much as she had, probably more; he was a constant disappointment to his father, the unwanted, unloved son. 

The villagers shout as they rush into the clearing. Cries of _the witch is in the cottage, burn the cottage_ are quickly overtaken by _The devil himself! The demon!_ A musket shot rings out and Rey flinches as the sound echoes through the air. She pulls her knees closer, making herself as small as possible, and begins to count the stars visible around the fast-moving clouds as the voices very suddenly become silent.

There is a shift in the world. Although Rey can see the moon clearly, and the stars, the clouds and the tips of the pine trees that embrace the clearing, everything is dark. The villagers are quiet in the clearing, the only sign that they are still there is the wet shuffling of boots in mud. A single voice screams in the still silence and this time there is no echo, only the sound itself. That scream is followed by a second one, and then the noise of scrambling - many people, maybe dozens, trying desperately to get away from something. And then, barely audible, Rey hears a wet _crunch_. Last winter she’d caught a fox in the act of raiding the chicken coop, and the sound the animal’s jaws had made as it bit into the head of that poor hen was very much like what she heard coming from the clearing. First one _crunch_ and then another. No more screams, but the moans and grunts of many people who have been hungry for a long time and are finally able to feast.

The feast lasts long enough for the moon to rise from just above the tops of the trees to the exact center of the starry sky, directly above where Rey sits in the decayed cottage, staring through the hole in the roof and toying with the wooden rosary beads, now tacky against her fingertips. The clouds are gone, leaving the dome above her head black and light and sharp. When the last of the gnawing quiets to nothing the world shifts again, although the darkness remains. Kylo’s voice, which had been utterly silent, sounds now but for the first time it is outside - outside of Rey’s head, outside of the cottage. It comes from the clearing itself.

“It’s safe now, Rey.” His voice sounds deep and rich as always but strange. The space behind her eyes is lonely, and she blinks back tears. “Come outside.”

Rey goes, heart in her throat. It feels like a fluttering bird, trapped inside her body. 

Kylo is black against the edge of the forest and she turns her head away from him before she can see him. She’s been with his form in the clearing before but he has always appeared to her as something recognizable - animals, usually. Less frequently he’s appeared as a tree or a bush, and on one memorable day he manifested as a stream, dancing merrily over a series of low cascades, appearing in one hole in the world and disappearing into another. Rey had waded in, and when she found the water warm she’d removed her shift and underclothes and they had experimented in the rapids. She had experienced sensations that day she hadn’t known were possible, pleasures of the body and the mind that still come to her in dreams. That might have been the day she fell in love with him, although _love_ is not nearly a strong enough term to describe what she feels for Kylo. What she feels for him is something akin to divine worship. Perhaps Reverend Hux had been right to fear for her soul.

His form is basically human - she can barely make out two arms, two legs, and a head, as she glimpses him out of the corner of her eye - but his head reaches almost to the tops of the trees that line the edge of the clearing. 

“Can you see me?” His voice, thunder on a mountain, comes down from the treetops too.

She tries to look at him straight on but it hurts, like trying to stare into the sun. She averts her eyes again shaking her head as she stares at her bare feet, toes sinking yet again into the mud. The mud is different, though. Darker, and warmer. She crouches; there are rivulets of red running through the churned earth, between and among prints in the ground that clearly show there were many people here. There is no one here now. The ground smells like the blacksmith’s after all the horses have been shod.

There is another shift, and she can see him more clearly. Still tall, but only twice as tall as a normal man. Still dark, but not the mind-bending blackness he was before. He has a face now, visible in the moonlight, but she focuses on his mouth. His lips are thick and plush, like a woman’s lips, and his mouth is wide. She wants to feel that mouth on her skin, and she shudders at the thought of it. 

“You’re cold,” he murmurs, and takes a step closer. “Let me hold you. Let me make you warm.”

He takes another step, slowly, as though he is afraid to frighten her. Rey is not frightened, although she is finding it difficult to form words. So instead she holds her arms up to him, a child begging to be carried. Very quickly he is there, hot and cold and smelling of the stars. He lifts her, pulls her close, and Rey can see that Kylo’s skin is not solid darkness. There are patterns there, not unlike the ink that decorated the skin of the sailors who manned the ship she traveled to the New World, so many years before. Only these patterns are not ink; as she watches them they change, drifting across his skin, darkness upon darkness. The patterns hurt her eyes but they also entrance her; she barely notices when he speaks to her again.

“Are you warm, my sweet?”

She looks into his face and sees his eyes. They are similar to human eyes, dark and soulful, and she would fall into them if she could. But they are clearly not human; Kylo, whatever he is, is not human.

“What did you do?”

Her voice is weak and the words catch in her throat. If he is bothered that she chose not to answer his question, he doesn’t show it. He simply answers hers.

“I gave them an option they didn’t know they had. They wanted to be consumed by fear and rage, and I gave them permission for that to happen.” She is small enough - or he is large enough - that he can hold her in the crook of one massive arm. He uses his free hand to push the hair out of her eyes and tuck it behind her ear. "Anything that was left I swallowed into the earth. I didn't want you to see that."

She reaches out to grab his finger but the rosary beads are tight in her fist, forgotten. Her hand is shaking but she is not afraid.

"Are you a god?" 

The corner of his mouth quirks up and she imagines again how those lips might feel against her skin, between her legs. She writhes in his arms and he answers her.

"Not exactly."

His amusement frustrates her as much as her own imagination does and she huffs and pushes against his chest.

"A demon, then. Sent from Hell to steal my soul. Was Reverend Hux right to be concerned?” 

Kylo scoffs and it rumbles deep in his chest, making her body shake.

"Gods and demons aren't real, my sweet. Human inventions, excuses to hurt and control. Do you know what is real?"

She stares him fully in the face and as she does one of the patterns crawls across his visage. The blackness is a void, everything and nothing; she wants to crawl in and make it her home.

"You are real, Rey. The sun, the moon." He crouches to the ground and pushes one huge hand into the mud, still rich with the blood of the villagers. "Trees and water and earth, all real. And me, yes. I can't tell you what I am but I can tell you that I am _real_."

He settles back onto his haunches and further back, sitting on the ground with his legs crossed and Rey still held tight to his chest. His skin is warm and also cold, and she is so relaxed she could sleep. It occurs to her that although the skin that touches her is naked she did not notice whether his entire body is unclothed. The thought of it makes her head swim even more than it already is.

“Have you always been here?”

He is silent for so long she fears she has asked a forbidden question, and she takes a breath to apologize when he finally speaks.

“I have been, for a very long time. Since before the birth of the universe as we know it. I haven’t always been here, and I have only been _here_, in this forest, for a very short time indeed.” 

She hums and rests her head against his shoulder, her fist against his chest. “I have met you in the trees and water and earth, and in the form of God’s creation. Why have you not yet appeared to me thus?” 

He averts his eyes, focusing on a point past her shoulder. This time, his voice comes from the space behind her eyes. 

_I thought you would be afraid of me, and I couldn’t live with that_.

She would laugh, except his face is so sorrowful. “I do not fear you, Kylo, I cannot imagine such a thing.”

His fingers tighten around her.

_I am yours, if you will have me._

Rey stretches luxuriously, tingling at the thought of having someone of her own. And not a power hungry religious man, or his weak son, but a beautiful being who can live in trees and who smells like stars. She reaches out her hand and drops the rosary beads onto the ground.

"I will have you, of course." She strokes his cheek and he leans into her. "For as long as you'll have me."

"Your life," he swallows, tears shining in his dark eyes. "Every year you have left. I can’t extend your life, but I promise to love you for as long as you live."

Rey ventures a hand up to push her fingers into his hair. It feels surprisingly human, thick and soft, and as it moves it exudes a scent she doesn’t recognize but would like to know better. 

“I have never wanted nor expected to live forever. But a life spent with you seems like it would be a fine thing indeed.”

She fists her hand in his hair and pulls him lower, so she can press his lips to hers. His mouth is so large it spans her entire face, so she focuses her attention on the center of his bottom lip. It’s soft, and when she darts out the tip of her tongue the taste is reminiscent of tree bark. His breath is warm and smells of clean earth and fire.

"Where would you like to go?" Kylo asks many hours later. They lie together in the cottage on a bed of thatch; the sun is just beginning to rise and the light of dawn turns the sky visible through the collapsed roof a soft pink slowly shifting to a crystal blue. Rey's nightgown is in tatters across the room and her entire body is very pleasantly sore. She was delighted to discover that her dark creature was naked after all. She traces the moving void across his skin and considers.

"You say we can go _anywhere_?"

"Anywhere. Any time." He wraps a long lock of her hair around his finger and gently tugs. "To other planets, other universes."

Rey laughs - the idea of whole other universes is ridiculous. She rolls onto her stomach and considers the question for a moment, but there is only one place she would like to go.

"I like the forest. Can we go play in the forest?"

His answer is a deep and joyous laugh, and he vanishes without warning. 

_Come find me, my sweet_, he teases from the space behind her eyes.

Rey leaps up with a laugh of her own, and within a moment she is running back into the trees. The air is cold enough to turn her breath to steam but she doesn't feel it. Her bare feet make clear prints in the still-bloody mud, and for the first time Rey is truly alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Here is the art that this story is a thank-you for, if you like it please hop over to Twitter and [give Lilander some love](https://twitter.com/LilanderSw)! Check out her other art, and her fic. We're blessed to have her in the fandom.
> 
>   
  

> 
> I'm [@FlowerOfCarrots](https://twitter.com/FlowerOfCarrots) on Twitter, come talk to me about eldritch monstrosities.
> 
> Updated to add: Saw this and couldn't resist. The Night Ride by Fyodor Pavlov ([you can buy a print on Society 6](https://society6.com/product/the-night-ride2385803_print?sku=s6-11804689p4a1v45))


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